Do Hedge Funds Love Rio Tinto plc (ADR) (RIO)?

We already know that not all hedge funds are bullish on the stock and some hedge funds actually got rid of their positions entirely. It’s worth mentioning that Mike Masters’s Masters Capital Management dumped the largest position of the “upper crust” of funds monitored by Insider Monkey, worth close to $55.9 million in call options, and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $24.3 million worth of Rio Tinto plc (ADR) (NYSE:RIO) shares.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Rio Tinto plc (ADR) (NYSE:RIO). These stocks are E I Du Pont De Nemours And Co (NYSE:DD), Banco Santander, S.A. (ADR) (NYSE:SAN), Itau Unibanco Holding SA (ADR) (NYSE:ITUB), and BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble RIO’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 27 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1.21 billion. That figure was just $394 million in RIO’s case. E I Du Pont De Nemours And Co (NYSE:DD) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Banco Santander, S.A. (ADR) (NYSE:SAN) is the least popular one with only 16 bullish hedge fund positions. Rio Tinto plc (ADR) (NYSE:RIO) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard DD might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: none.